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Newbie here. My old Dish 4700 receiver gave up and Dish sent me a 311 as a replacement. I cannot get the 311 to properly connect to my old Dish 500 dish. I am using SW21 trying to connect to 110 and 119 birds. Dish and switch worked fine with old 4700 receiver. Called Dish and get conflicting answers, depending on who I talk to--should or will not work??? The 119 bird works OK, the 110 does not, getting error to check switch which I have done many times with no good results.

Try this - disconnect the receiver from the cable. Now - do a check switch.
Unplug the power, then connect the cable again and plug the power back. Do another Check Switch. If you have an SW21 with 2 Legacy LNBs - it should do 38 tests.

If this fails - see about replacing the SW21 with another one. If you don't have one, consider getting a DishProPlus TWIN LNB (I know this works - as it is what I'm using). If you have another Legacy receiver, Having the 311 will power the DPP TWIN and the Legacy receiver will see it as an SW64.

I did get another SW21 and went through all the procedure and it worked fine. So then I went back to the old SW21 and it now works fine also. Don't know what happened but all works now and can verify that Dish 311 receiver IS compatible with a SW21.

Sometimes the SW21's get a lil flaky. I've lost birds before, changed to a different 21 and got it working again. Hell I've even lost 1 of the birds, simply re-ran check switch again, an voila, worked again. If the switch is outside and exposed to weather, it can get even more flaky.

Sometimes the SW21's get a lil flaky. I've lost birds before, changed to a different 21 and got it working again. Hell I've even lost 1 of the birds, simply re-ran check switch again, an voila, worked again. If the switch is outside and exposed to weather, it can get even more flaky.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I checked the switch several times and the report was 119 odd and even OK, 110 even OK and 110 odd with a X. I tried setting up the 500 dish as a 300, one bird at a time and got good signal levels from both satellites. Went back to the SW21, ran the switch setup again and got the same results. Stayed that way until I tried a second SW21.

Unfortunately, I didn't. And the conflicting answers from Dish did not help. The old combination 4700/SW21 was used at home and in my RV for about 10 years and I had set up that combination probably close to 100 times all over the Western US with no problems. When I replaced the 4700 with the 311 receiver and it didn't work, I naturally assumed (at least to me) that the 311 and SW21 did not like each other. I was wrong!!

Any time you change a 311 environment (lnb, switch, etc) you have to fool the receiver to get it to reset. It is the only Dish receiver that I know of where you have to do this. Running the switch check with the receiver disconnected to the lnb does this. Only Dish knows why:hurah::)